Former Mexico officials with ties to Texas under investigation

Updated 2:04 am, Sunday, February 19, 2012

Photo: Foto De Cortesía, TYR

Image 1of/3

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 3

TOMAS YARRINGTON RUVALCABA

TOMAS YARRINGTON RUVALCABA

Photo: Foto De Cortesía, TYR

Image 2 of 3

Texas Govonor George W. Bush shakes hands with the Govonor of the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico, Tomas Yarrington, (L) as Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo (C) looks on at cermonies inaugurating the new World Trade Bridge connecting Laredo, Texas and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. The bridge is only open to commercial traffic and opened officially on April 15. Staff Photo By: John Davenport

Texas Govonor George W. Bush shakes hands with the Govonor of the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico, Tomas Yarrington, (L) as Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo (C) looks on at cermonies inaugurating the new World

Texas Governor Rick Perry, right, answers questions following a news conference held with Tomas Yarrington, governor of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, left, and Texas Secretary of State Henry Cuellar, center, at the Governor's Mansion in Austin, Texas, Thursday, Feb. 22, 2001, where the governors discussed boosting cross-border trade.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, right, answers questions following a news conference held with Tomas Yarrington, governor of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, left, and Texas Secretary of State Henry Cuellar, center,

A former governor of the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas forged close ties with Texas politicians before investigations in that country and a recent arrest in San Antonio cast a shadow over his tenure.

Tomás Yarrington Ruvalcaba, who ran Tamaulipas from 1999 to 2005, is one of three former governors the Mexican government acknowledged this month are the targets of a corruption probe.

And documents in a criminal case in Texas allege that Yarrington, who worked hand in hand with his Texas counterparts during his career as state treasurer, governor, Mexican congressman and border mayor, was on the take from one of Mexico's most notorious drug cartels.

The former Tamaulipas governors facing investigation in Mexico — Yarrington, Eugenio Hernández and Manuel Cavazos Lerma — often crossed the Rio Grande to rub elbows and pose for photos with their colleagues in Texas.

Yarrington, who has not been charged with any crimes and has publicly denied any wrongdoing, was once honored by the Texas Senate.

Most Popular

As allegations such as these surface, there's potential for political egg on the face north of the Rio Grande when Texas' partners in Mexico go down on corruption charges, said Henry Flores, a political science professor and dean of the Graduate School at St. Mary's University.

“I think that would be true of any kind of situations where you've got political relationship with someone and you've been working with them diligently,” he said. “Of course it's a political embarrassment. Whether you know they're corrupt is another thing.”

San Antonio raid

On Feb. 8, federal agents raided the Stone Oak-area home of Antonio Peña Arguelles, arresting the 56-year-old legal resident from Mexico and accusing him of money laundering. An affidavit filed by a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent outlining the allegations against Peña Arguelles made serious accusations about Yarrington.

An informant “described Antonio Peña Arguelles as a conduit between Mexican politicians, in particular Tomas Yarrington, and Zeta (drug cartel) members Miguel Treviño Morales and Heriberto Lazcano,” the agent wrote.

The affidavit went on to allege that Peña Arguelles funneled millions of dollars from the Zetas to Yarrington and other elected officials.

In arresting Peña, the DEA accused Yarrington of taking money from two of Mexico's most notorious organized crime figures. Lazcano, a former Mexican special forces soldier, is believed to be the Zetas leader. Treviño Morales, the organization's No. 2, is wanted on five murder warrants in the U.S.

In an interview posted Friday by the digital publication Animal Politico, Yarrington, who said he's living in the U.S. with his family, denied the allegations.

More Information

“It's false. Absolutely false,” he said. “I never had anything to do with that.”

In 1999, the Texas Senate passed a resolution honoring Yarrington. When Gov. Rick Perry was sworn into office for his first full term in 2003, Yarrington was in attendance.

His successor, Hernández, was in attendance and received a mention in Perry's 2005 State of the State speech. A Perry spokeswoman said the invitations were the result of “a professional relationship in their capacities as border governors.”

A closer relationship appears to have existed between Yarrington and former President George W. Bush.

During his time as Texas governor, Bush worked closely with Yarrington, Cavazos Lerma and other Mexican officials to forge trade initiatives and address environmental issues, and when Bush first ran for president in 2000, news stories cited his friendship with Yarrington as evidence of his foreign policy bona fides.

“Tomás is terrific, worked with him a lot,” the Los Angeles Times quoted Bush as saying in 2000.

For his part, Yarrington spoke highly of his Texas counterpart. During the campaign, a Dallas Morning News story included Yarrington relating the tale of sharing a stage with Bush.

“Tomás Yarrington is not my friend,” the then-Tamaulipas governor quoted Bush as saying. “The crowd went silent. Then he said, ‘Tomas Yarrington is my compadre.' The crowd went wild, and he immediately won them over. Governor Bush is a politician with a human face.”

A Bush spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokesman for state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville, who authored the resolution honoring Yarrington, said the two began working together when Yarrington was mayor of Matamoros, right across the river from Lucio's hometown, from 1993 to 1995.

“It would be incumbent upon him to maintain a professional relationship with ... the political leadership and business leadership of local towns,” said Ben Wright, Lucio's press secretary.

Political motivations

Meanwhile, as the former governor's associates are arrested in the U.S. — after DEA agents arrested Peña Arugelles in San Antonio, U.S. Marshals picked up Hernández's former spokesman Tuesday in McAllen — allegations of political motivation are swirling in Mexico.

Tamaulipas and Coahuila are both strongholds of the opposition Revolutionary Institutional Party, which lost the presidency in 2000 after decades of single-party rule plagued by allegations of corruption and human rights violations.

Opinion polls place the PRI's presidential hopeful, Enrique Peña Nieto, 20 points ahead of his closest competitor. But the corruption allegations could threaten that lead.

“Behind all of this is nothing more than an orchestrated and well-planned campaign by the government,” Peña charged after the accusations against Yarrington were reported in the Mexican press.

Not surprisingly, Josefina Vazquez-Mota, the candidate of President Felipe Calderón's National Action Party, denies the investigations are politically motivated. She proposed last weekend that politicians convicted of colluding with gangsters be jailed for life.

Luis Rubio, president of the Center of Research for Development, a Mexico City think tank, said he doesn't doubt the investigations into the former governors are politically motivated. But that's immaterial, Rubio said, if the allegations against them turn out to be true.

“There's no question that it does embarrass a lot of people,” he said. “And in the case of Mexico, it could embarrass the PRI candidate for president.”

The fallout's reaching the U.S., too. A spokesman for the campaigns of U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, and his brother, Webb County Sheriff Martin Cuellar, said they've returned or given to charity campaign donations from Peña-Arguelles, the accused conduit between the cartels and Mexican politicians.

In 2007, Peña Arguelles gave $1,500 to Martin Cuellar's election campaign, and in 2006 Antonio Pena's then-wife, Armandina, gave $1,000 to the re-election effort of Henry Cuellar.

Martin Cuellar asked the person who solicited the donation from Peña Arguelles to return it, said spokesman Colin Strother, and Henry Cuellar donated the money to charity. They did so last year, after learning that Peña Arguelles' brother was slain in Nuevo Laredo and his killers left a note accusing the brothers of working with the Zetas.

“When you're raising millions of dollars ... logistically it's impossible to identify the background and rumor mill on every single donor,” Strother said.